Self-awareness is a supreme gift, a treasure as precious as life.
IRVIN D. YALOMThe pain is there; when you close one door on it, it knocks to come in somewhere else.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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Mirroring, softly, barely audibly, just under the membrane of consciousness.
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Every person must choose how much truth he can stand.
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Perhaps the single most important therapeutic credo that I have is that the unexamined life is not worth living.
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Psychotherapy is a cyclical process from isolation into relationship. It is cyclical because the patient, in terror of existential isolation, relates deeply and meaningfully to the therapist and then, strengthened by this encounter, is led back again to a confrontation with existential isolation.
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Some sort of greater awareness of their own finiteness and what their time on earth really is, and what they really want to do with their lives, could help improve them.
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It’s not easy to live every moment wholly aware of death. It’s like trying to stare the sun in the face: you can stand only so much of it. Because we cannot live frozen in fear, we generate methods to soften death’s terror.
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What? ‘Borderline patients play games’? That what you said? Ernest, you’ll never be a real therapist if you think like that. That’s exactly what I meant earlier when I talked about the dangers of diagnosis.
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The spirit of a man is constructed out of his choices.
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If one is to love oneself one must behave in ways that one can admire.
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This is what makes us human. But it comes with a costly price: the wound of mortality. Our existence is forever shadowed by the knowledge that we will grow, blossom, and, inevitably, diminish and die.
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The death anxiety of many people is fueled … by disappointment at never having fulfilled their potential.
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If people in their 20s had more death awareness, would that in fact temper their ambition or drive?
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If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.
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Living safely is dangerous.
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Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you’ll always find despair.
IRVIN D. YALOM






